Fox News’ London bureau chief Scott Norvell explains what they mean by “balanced”:
Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly.
He’s making the point that, at least with Fox, you know about their biases, whereas those sly bastards at the BBC insist on wearing business suits over their Mao jackets.
Except in this case, Norvell is chatting with a fellow reporter (and, given that it’s the Euro edition of the Wall Street Journal, a reporter for a very friendly media outlet). So long as he’s talking with other members of Those In The Know, he’ll be charming and joke about how what a naughty scamp Fox News is.
What’s galling is this: Norvell’s viewers will never hear that kind of confession from him or his colleagues. Fox News will treat them with exactly the same cynical contempt that drove Murdoch to found his network in the first place, promising fair and balanced and delivering the polar opposite.
